Square Foot Gardening Planting Guide

If you want to grow your own vegetables but lack space when it comes to your backyard, you can take advantage of square foot gardening.

Creating your own raised planter, and preparing a garden bed for crops is fairly easy when you pay attention to square foot gardening spacing.

With a bit of guidance and advice, you can master the art of urban gardening and start growing your own fruit and vegetables in your backyard, on a patio, or even on a roof. To start leading a healthier and natural plant-based lifestyle, get ready to learn everything you need to know about growing your own at home, with our ultimate square foot gardening planting guide.

We will cover the basics of square foot gardening spacing, to ensure you have the right amount of room to grow your favorite veggies, as well as where to plant different types of crops for the best yield. So make yourself a cup of coffee, and let’s get started!

Square Foot Gardening Spacing

Let’s start with the basics of square foot gardening. Each crop is unique and depending on the type of vegetables you want to plant, and the size of your garden, square foot gardening spacing will help you to understand how to make the most out of the space you have.

After building and preparing a garden bed, preferable raised and exposing your crops to a minimum of 8 hours of sunlight and against a wall of some sort, you can start to section off your individual vegetable squares.

Ideally, you’ll want to make your square foot planter, 4ft by 8ft, which will give you 24 individual planting squares. You can easily section off each square with some nails and string, as shown in the image above. Now to decide what to plant! Here is a quick breakdown of square foot gardening spacing depending on crops.

How Many Vegetables Per Square Foot Garden?

So, let’s say you want to plant tomatoes and spinach and carrots. You can plant one tomato plant in the first square foot, then 9 spinach seeds in the next square, and 6 carrots in the third square.

This will give you the right amount of space to grow your veggies. Make sure to plant crops that grow tall, or require a pole to climb, in the back of your planter and against the wall you’ve positioned your planter by, to avoid blocking out the sun for your other crops.

Preparing A Square Foot Garden Bed

The beauty of square foot gardening is that you won’t need to deal with as many weeds as you would with traditional gardening, as you have more control over the soil and crops inside your raised planter.

This is why this particular method is preferred by those new to growing vegetables at home, and people with limited time on their hands. So if you’re a beginner when it comes to gardening, this is the best method for you.

To learn how to make your very own raised planter, take a look at my YouTube video: How To Build A Raised Garden Bed.

If you don’t have a lot of space at home, it’s best to stick to a high yielding crop such as kale, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, or peppers, which will give you a long period of harvesting.

Planting Vegetables With Enough Space To Grow

Going back to the crops you want to plant, let’s say you fancy growing spinach in one of your squares. You can grow 9 spinach seeds in one square foot, but you’ll need to space out your crops evenly.

You can use old chopsticks, stuck together, to help guide you on where to make the holes for your seeds, as shown in the image above. Make sure the soil is wet to support the germination process.

Top tip: When watering your crops, make sure to water close to the soil and be careful not to splash the water, as this can spread disease and fungus. If you happen to splash soil onto the leaves of your plants, this can ruin all your hard work.

For more green finger advice for growing your own crops, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel Devin The Gardener or check out our homepage on Devinthegardener